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Thursday, April 23, 2015

NY Times Reports Clinton Foundation Donations May Have Allowed Russia To Buy Control Of US Uranium

It's like a game of whac-a-mole every time the Clinton team beats down one scandal, another pops up from a different hole.

The latest revelation comes from the NY Times and involves a deal which enabled Russia to own about 20% of the uranium production capacity of the United States for a $2.35 million donation to the Clinton Family Foundation. According to the report a Canadian based company Uranium One, owned the uranium assets was being purchased by Russian state atomic energy agency Rosatom a deal which had to be approved by various U.S. agencies including the State Department. As the State Department was mulling of the deal, the Chairman of Uranium One donated the $2.35 million from his family foundation to the Clintons.

It gets worse, not only was there much more heading into the Clinton foundation that the $2.35 but a significant portion wasn't reported.

Before Mrs. Clinton could assume her post as secretary of state, the White House demanded that she sign a memorandum of understanding placing limits on her husband’s foundation’s activities. To avoid the perception of conflicts of interest, beyond the ban on foreign government donations, the foundation was required to publicly disclose all contributors.

To judge from those disclosures — which list the contributions in ranges rather than precise amounts — the only Uranium One official to give to the Clinton Foundation was Mr. Telfer, the chairman, and the amount was relatively small: no more than $250,000, and that was in 2007, before talk of a Rosatom deal began percolating.

But a review of tax records in Canada, where Mr. Telfer has a family charity called the Fernwood Foundation, shows that he donated millions of dollars more, during and after the critical time when the foreign investment committee was reviewing his deal with the Russians. With the Russians offering a special dividend, shareholders like Mr. Telfer stood to profit.

His donations through the Fernwood Foundation included $1 million reported in 2009, the year his company appealed to the American Embassy to help it keep its mines in Kazakhstan; $250,000 in 2010, the year the Russians sought majority control; as well as $600,000 in 2011; and $500,000 in 2012. Mr. Telfer said that his donations had nothing to do with his business dealings, and that he had never discussed Uranium One with Mr. or Mrs. Clinton. He said he had given the money because he wanted to support Mr. Giustra’s charitable endeavors with Mr. Clinton. “Frank and I have been friends and business partners for almost 20 years,” he said.

Mr. Telfer’s undisclosed donations came in addition to between $1.3 million and $5.6 million in contributions, which were reported, from a constellation of people with ties to Uranium One or UrAsia, the company that originally acquired Uranium One’s most valuable asset: the Kazakhstan mines. Without those assets, the Russians would have had no interest in the deal: “It wasn’t the goal to buy the Wyoming mines. The goal was to acquire the Kazakh assets, which are very good,” Mr. Novikov, the Rosatom spokesman, said in an interview.

In 2010 an ally of Uranium One, a Russian investment bank called Renaissance Capital invited Bill Clinton to speak to its investor's conference for $500,000.

Renaissance Capital analysts talked up Uranium One’s stock, assigning it a “buy” rating and saying in a July 2010 research report that it was “the best play” in the uranium markets. In addition, Renaissance Capital turned up that same year as a major donor, along with Mr. Telfer and Mr. Giustra, to a small medical charity in Colorado run by a friend of Mr. Giustra’s. In a newsletter to supporters, the friend credited Mr. Giustra with helping get donations from “businesses around the world.”

The Clinton team will probably accelerate its attacks on Peter Schweizer the author of the book Clinton Cash which instigated the NY Times investigation. But according to the Times, the book was used as a starting off point. Schweizer's information was double-checked and then the paper's own reporters investigated, fleshed it out, and added to what the book revealed about the Uranium One deal.

The NY Times report does not have a smoking gun, beyond the timing of the donations and the uranium deal, there is no evidence presented of a direct connection between Clinton Foundation donations, Bubba's half a million dollar speaking pay day and the approval of the deal--It may all be a coincidence (if one believes in coincidences). And isn't it strange that these type of coincidences always seem to happen around the Clinton family?

Folks, this revelation by the New York Times is just the beginning. Look for more from the Times and the Washington Post who also got an advanced copy of the book and Schweizer's research along with Fox News. Folks, this revelation by the New York Times is just the beginning. Look for more from the Times and the Washington Post (which also got an advanced copy of the book and Schweizer's research along with Fox News). Neither one of those newspapers could ever be considered to have a conservative nor anti-Democratic Party bent.